


memories talk, memories walk

by ohallows



Series: azu week 2020 [4]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: (only mentioned), Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Guilt, coda to an early s4 airship episode, ‘zolf supports azu: the fic’
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26894122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohallows/pseuds/ohallows
Summary: Azu has nightmares, sometimes.
Relationships: Azu & Zolf Smith
Series: azu week 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1955713
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17
Collections: Azu Week 2020





	memories talk, memories walk

**Author's Note:**

> hi my name is bri and i love zolf & azu’s dynamic so much it’s just very nice and quietly supportive of each other and it’s v sweet i am glad we get them being good friends.

Azu doesn’t have nightmares often; or, well, she doesn’t often have nightmares that end with her sitting up in bed with adrenaline pulsing through her veins, or ones that end with her wide awake and screaming. Most of the time, her nightmares are quieter; just as terrifying, of course, but more insidious. They’re the ones that leave Azu so deep within herself, just trying to claw her way past the guilt and the despair and the anger until she’s finally awake again, dreading the next dream that will come. 

Tonight is no different; she’s sitting out on a cliff’s edge, staring out over the mountains of her homeland, and then she can see Emeka, a far-off point in the distance. She chases after him, but the distance only grows, and soon Emeka is gone, fading away into the shadows along with the rest of her village. Azu comes to a stop soon enough, too far away to help, too far away to make a  _ difference _ , and she sinks to her knees, hands clenched in the dirt. 

There’s a voice on the wind behind her; nothing that she can make out, nothing  _ intelligible _ , but she turns anyway, and sees only shadows. She’s alone, left out here in the dark, and somehow the emptiness is closing in on her. Her breath begins to come a bit faster, but then she sees other shadows, somehow even darker than the inky aura surrounding her, and they reshape, reform, into Sasha and Grizzop, who look at her with anger and accusation in their eyes. Azu tries to speak, tries to say something,  _ anything _ , but the words are stuck in her throat. 

The world flashes around her, and then she’s back in Rome, and she’s frantically grabbing for Grizzop’s hand. It’s slippery, more slippery than she can remember, and everything fractures around her as she grabs him, only to lose her grip, over and over and  _ over  _ again, until he’s finally gone and Azu is left holding nothing but empty air. She’s alone again, in the dark, and then it’s like glass shatters as Azu falls even farther, darkness swallowing her up as she tries to breathe, tries to make it back to the single point of light shining above her. 

Azu wakes, silently, and stares up at the ceiling of her cabin. The ship is gently rocking back and forth with the wind, and she can feel herself trembling. Her cheeks are wet, she realises, and she gently wipes at her eyes. She focuses on Kiko’s arm around her waist, focuses on the sound of the elementals crackling through the ships pipes, and breathes, trying to settle herself down. The dream… it’s not the first time she’s had it, not even close. It’s been a bit of a recurring one ever since they’d returned to Cairo and spent the week in the cell in Japan. Emeka, Sasha…  _ Grizzop. _ It’s all people she’s failed, in the end. People she’s let down, without even knowing she’d done so. Even with how hard she’d tried  _ not  _ to.

She takes a deep breath, but she continues to stare at the wall opposite. Through the porthole, she can see the ship gently passing over the land below; in the distance, there’s the bright greens and blues of the borealis, shining across the land. The megafauna bones are still littered along the ground, rising up through the clouds. The ship begins to bank, as gently as anything, and Azu wonders who’s at the wheel. Zolf or Barnes, if she had to make a guess, but the schedule has been a bit shaky recently, so her memory might be incorrect . 

She tries to go back to sleep, focusing on Kiko’s breathing and the feel of her heartbeat against her back, but the dream is still ever-present in her mind, and after what feels like hours of her laying there, unable to fall asleep, Azu decides maybe it’s time to get up. She untangles herself from Kiko, careful not to wake her, and grabs a blanket from their cabin on the ship. She wraps it around her shoulders; it’s too early for her to change into her priestesses’ robes, so this will have to do for now. She leaves the cabin, carefully closing the door behind her as quietly as she can. It’s cold, even belowdecks, and Azu wraps the blanket a bit tighter around herself as she shivers. 

Something smells nice, from the ship’s kitchen, and she heads down there, walking silently through the belly of the ship. It rocks back and forth as she goes; she’s never been on a ship before, not like this, and she wonders if it’s luck or magic that’s kept her from feeling at all nauseous. She passes Cel’s bunk, and then Hamid’s, and then curves around the edge to get to… what had Zolf and Barnes called it? The galley, or something? Whatever it is, the door’s open a crack, with a single beam of light shining from the inside. She pushes it open, and steps in.

Zolf’s stood inside, back to her as Azu enters. She knocks on the wood of the door, enough of an announcement that someone is there, and Zolf turns, scanning the room until his eyes land on her. 

“Oh, morning, Azu,” he greets, giving her half a wave before turning his attention back to the stove. “Grab a seat anywhere. Friedrich’s at the wheel, and Barnes and Meerck are about, but other than that we’re the only ones awake right now.”

Azu does; the chairs on the ship aren’t particularly comfortable, but Azu isn’t looking for comfort as much as she’s looking for a distraction right now. She’s careful to grab a seat at an angle, so that she’s not just faced with Zolf’s back, and wraps her blanket around herself as she curls up on herself on one of the benches. “Good morning, Zolf,” she says. “What are you cooking?”

Zolf scrunches up his face in concentration. “Trying to - okay, so, Earhart was asking about a stew, and I know Cel likes them too - no idea about Hamid, but, eh, nothing new there, so, er - and, I figured you and he would like something warm? So. Grabbed, er, some of the rations we had left that I thought could work. Not - not sure how successful it’ll be, but. I’m trying, at least.”

“It smells lovely,” Azu says, smiling, and Zolf gives her half a grin. 

“Cheers,” he says, absentmindedly, and goes back to stirring the pot on the stove. “Right, what’s got you up this early? Not your rotation for a bit yet, yeah?”

Azu shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep,” she says, sure it doesn’t come out as casual as she meant it, but Zolf doesn’t push. He, more than anyone, knows when people don’t want to talk, and respects it.

He goes back to cooking, talking to himself a bit and grumbling about not having a recipe. They sit there in relative silence for a moment, apart from the sounds of sizzling and crackling as Zolf continues to make breakfast. It’s peaceful, almost; Azu lets her eyes slip closed just to rest, even though she knows she won’t be falling asleep anytime soon. The ship continues to move, slowly piloting it’s way through the Northern Wastes. She isn’t sure how much time passes while she sits there; eventually, she thinks she can feel a single beam of sunlight on her skin, and realises the sun must be starting to rise over the mountains to the east. Still, even time passing isn’t helping the dream completely leave her brain. It is fading, yes, but slowly, and Azu wishes she knew how to make it disappear completely.

“You alright, Azu?” Zolf asks, after some indefinite amount of time, and she cracks an eye open to see him holding the pot with a towel and giving her a concerned look. She considers staying quiet, just nodding and letting the dream slip past her until it shows up again in her dreams. But Zolf is  _ there,  _ and he’s  _ offered _ , and she knows that speaking about something helps the healing, usually. She hasn’t had many people to speak about this with; Hamid is dealing with so much on his own, and Cel is a good listener but they don’t have the context, and Kiko is… well, she’s lovely, and wonderful, and Azu really likes her, but they’ve really only known each other for about a week at this point, and this feels a bit… well,  _ early. _

“You said you could listen?” she asks, and Zolf pauses for a second, gaze flicking between her and the food in the pan. “You don’t - have to stop,” she adds, and Zolf nods. 

“Honestly, I’m almost done anyway,” he says. Azu can’t really tell if he’s telling the truth or lying to make her more comfortable, but she isn’t going to press either way. He wipes his hands on his apron, moving one of the pots to a cooler burner. “It’s alright. People can have a bit of a cold breakfast.”

Azu smiles, half-heartedly, and Zolf comes to sit down at the table, grabbing the chair across from her. He pulls the apron off - it says something she can’t completely catch, something Hamid decided to sew into the fabric, and then he balls it up and places it on the seat next to him. He doesn’t say anything either, just leans back and folds his arms and looks as casual as anything. And - well, Zolf did offer to  _ listen _ , so Azu takes a deep breath and begins.

“Hamid told you a bit about Rome, didn’t he?” Azu asks, more hesitant than she wants to be. “In the cell, I mean.”

Zolf nods. “A bit. Filled me in on - on her, and er. How everything. Went. I didn’t really - well, after hearing about it, about what happened to  _ Sasha _ , I - weren’t really up for asking more, you know?” 

Azu does. She - Zolf still hasn’t talked to her about Sasha, not really, and she isn’t going to push, but… well, she saw his face when Hamid mentioned the wasting sickness that Sasha had, the one that started in Prague. She knows he viewed her as family, as one of the people he trusted the most, and she knows where his own guilt stems from. She’s not going to push more than that. “I understand,” she says. “We - the way we escaped was dangerous. There weren’t any other ways to get into the planar space, and - we knew that going in, but I didn’t… I don’t know. I suppose I still didn’t expect to lose anyone.

“I keep dreaming of it,” she whispers, and she looks down at her hands. The dream isn’t completely gone, yet, and she can still feel Grizzop’s hands clutched in hers, fingers slipping through her grasp like smoke. “His hand was right there, and then he was  _ gone _ , and then we landed back on the floor, but they were both… gone.”

It’s this moment that plays endlessly through her mind; it comes and goes in waves, sometimes, like the sea beating against a gentle shore, but it’s gotten worse, of late, for reasons Azu can’t quite understand. She just - it’s the guilt that eats at her, more than anything else. A pile of guilt and regret and sorrow that tugs at her bones, drags her down into the depths until she doesn’t know which way is up anymore. 

She wishes that there was a shrine on the ship. She thinks that that had helped, back at the inn, and in the temple at Hiroshima. It had given her a peace of mind, almost, knowing that she was spending the time to remember her friends. 

“This why you were up so early?” Zolf asks, but it’s more rhetorical than anything else. Azu still nods, though; if he’s looking for confirmation, it’s easy enough to find.

“I didn’t want to wake Kiko,” she confesses. “I don’t… I don’t shout, or anything, when I have a bad dream. But she’s a light sleeper at the best of times, and lying there awake for hours on end in the dark didn’t seem like it would help me push the images out of my head, much.”

Zolf hums, a noncommittal and supportive noise, and Azu leans back in the seat, playing with her hands. The dream is finally beginning to fade from her mind, but the feelings will linger on her skin and in her heart for the rest of the day, regardless of how many distractions come up to try and drag her away from it. 

At least it’s something she’s used to. Every night in quarantine for those first two weeks were like this; nightmares stretched out in front of her, lingering in the waking hours. But just because she’s used to it doesn’t mean it’s  _ easy  _ to deal with. Or that she wants to.

“Look, I’m not - I’m not the best at this bit, yeah? I can - I mean listening, sure, you just shut up and sit there and let the other person talk, can do that dead easy, but,” Zolf huffs a breath - Azu knows him well enough by now to know it’s not at her, more at himself, and that letting him sit for a moment to organise his words is all she can do to help. “The whole… feelings bit? Not really my lane.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Azu says. She believes that, as well; Zolf’s better at this then he’ll let himself think, but no matter how many times she tells him that, he doesn’t internalise it or even accept it. 

“Okay, fine, we can talk about my skills at being an emotional rag  _ later _ , this is about you, and how you’re feeling,” Zolf says, and it’s  _ just  _ shy of a lecture that Azu smiles a bit.

“Okay,” she echoes, and Zolf leans forward a bit, face pulling in a few different directions in what Azu likes to think of as his thinking process. 

“I never, er, met this Grizzop guy,” Zolf says, and he looks as awkward as he always does when getting into  _ emotions _ , but there’s an edge of steel to his voice that makes Azu want to believe him. “But I doubt he would blame you for this. At all.”

Azu hopes that’s true. “I -”

“No, Azu, I mean it, I -” Zolf pauses for a second, collecting his thoughts. “He knew, alright? Going in, I mean. He made the choice to take the risk, and, er. It’s not. Your fault? You can’t blame yourself for someone else’s decisions. Not when they go in fully aware, yeah?”

He’s right. Azu knows he is, but there’s a difference between knowing that he’s right and actually being able to internalise it. 

“ _ You _ can’t, either,” Azu reminds him, because he knows he  _ does _ blame himself for it, for what happened to Sasha, even though he wasn’t even there. 

Zolf snorts at that. “Yeah, well. I’m working on that bit, myself.” He leans forward, elbows resting on his legs, right above where the flesh ends and metal begins. “Not always easy.”

“Maybe we work on it together,” Azu says, half-serious in her suggestion, and Zolf snorts.

“Right,” he says. “Maybe we should.”

They lapse into a comfortable silence as the dawn slowly begins to break over the mountaintops. The ship creaks above them as the people on shift rotate out, half heading back to bed as new crew members take their spots. No one comes into the kitchen to demand some breakfast, yet, so Azu enjoys the peace and quiet a little while longer.

“Thank you, Zolf. For listening,” Azu says, eventually, and before she can think twice of it, pulls him into an awkward hug, considering they’re both still sitting. He relaxes into her grip; it’s nice, now, that he doesn’t tense up anytime someone tries to hug him. She pulls back before long; Zolf reaches out and pats her on the forearm, giving her a sincere smile. 

“Anytime, Azu,” he says, and heads back to finish up the cooking. 

Azu watches him for a moment longer and then leans back in the chair, resting her chin in her hands as she stares out the porthole to watch the sunrise. 


End file.
